Safety Net Payments

USDA Washington Farm Service Agency has announced that approximately 10,000 Washington farms who enrolled in the new safety-net programs established by the 2014 Farm Bill will soon begin receiving financial assistance for the 2014 crop year. Judy Olson, FSA Executive Director explains.

OLSON: The 2014 program was quite a bit different as you and your listeners will remember because there's no more guaranteed program payments. These are only payments when there is a substantial loss to producers either through yield and or price. Of course in our state, every county was affected by the drought. That correspondingly was reflected in many counties by reduced yield and then additionally in several commodities there was a price drop. So that triggered about 6500 farms have received ARC County payments.

Olson says that not every commodity triggered payments.

OLSON: Earlier in the month we made over $75-million dollars worth of payments to those farms. Probably the biggest commodities are the ones most frequently triggered in our state, of course most of them were in the drylands areas but not necessarily all but wheat of course, some corn, dry peas and some barley.

For details be sure and check with your local FSA office.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.